


and gravity sings

by openended



Category: Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice
Genre: Beaches, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Phone Calls & Telephones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-30
Updated: 2012-09-30
Packaged: 2017-11-15 07:57:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/524965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openended/pseuds/openended
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone has to tell Amelia.</p><p>(9x01 Grey's Anatomy spoilers)</p>
            </blockquote>





	and gravity sings

**Author's Note:**

> I'll stop spamming the combined tags of Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice, and Grief/Mourning shortly. My muse for this fandom came back to life for Mark's death, apparently.
> 
> ** This was written before Private Practice 6x02 aired.

Something’s wrong. She knows something’s wrong the minute Addison steps off the elevator. Jake follows her and they both look like they spent the night in hell. Addison brushes off Jake’s attempt at a comforting hand on her arm and takes a visibly shaky breath as she steps away from him toward her office. Amelia’s the only one in the reception area at the moment and Jake catches her eye, and gives her a little motion with his head in Addison’s general direction: _I’m worried, follow her, please_.

Amelia nods: _on it_. She’s next to Addison in three strides and picks up on the body language Jake didn’t and doesn’t touch her though every neuron in her brain is screaming to give her a hug. She shuts the door and revises her initial evaluation of the situation: someone _died_. That’s the only explanation for this.

She looks upward, in the general direction of where she’s been told God resides, and glares. They have not been having a good time of it lately.

Addison wipes at her eyes. She has to tell Amelia. Derek will call her eventually (though he’ll probably call Nancy first, break down, and she’ll handle calling everyone else), but she has to tell her. She can’t do that to Amelia; can’t make her wait simply because it hurts too much to say the words. 

Henry’s in day care and her only patient for the day had to reschedule. She has six hours before she has to be a responsible adult again. She sits on the couch and breathes in deeply, exhaling a thin line of air. “Mark,” is all she says before the tears start. Last night was hysteria, and then Henry picked up on something being wrong with his mother and started in on the crying, but she’s going to be grieving Mark for a long time. She rests her forehead in her hands.

Amelia blinks, stunned, and sits on the coffee table in front of Addison. She can put two and two together and come up with _Mark died yesterday_ , but she needs to actually hear the words. She checks to make sure her phone isn’t on silent so she’ll hear if her brother calls, and then gently circles her fingers around Addison’s wrists, drawing her friend’s hands away from her face. “Addison, what happened?” She swallows.

“He, uhm,” Addison withdraws her right hand from Amelia’s grip and wipes at her eyes, “had a DNR. After thirty days.” They knew about the coma, Callie had called, but if she had known about the DNR, she hadn’t told Addison. “Miranda called me last night.” She’s glad Derek hadn’t been the one to call her. Some of her tears have been from thinking about him without his other half. She doesn’t want to hear his voice right now.

Amelia switches to the couch and Addison leans into her. She wraps her arms around Addison and just lets her cry. There’s a hole now, a Mark-sized hole where she used to have a second older brother. He always watched out for her, even when they were on the verge of sleeping together, and she wonders who’s going to have her back now. She wipes away a tear of her own, but more won’t come until later, when she’s by herself. She’s always grieved alone.

In a few hours, she convinces Addison to leave work. She takes her home, Henry firmly buckled into his car seat in the back, and doesn’t have the damndest idea how to deal with this. She usually gets high when people she cares about die. She cracks her neck at a red light and wills that desire away.

They sit outside in the sun, talking about everything and nothing at all, avoiding mentioning Mark or anything that would remind them of Mark, until Addison needs to focus on Henry and dinner. Their lives don’t just stop because someone else’s did, a fact that Amelia’s always found dramatically unfair.

Amelia drags a finger down the condensation on the outside of her lemonade and starts to cry when the sun dips below the horizon. She curls up in the deck chair, glad that Addison’s distracted inside. She can’t handle other people right now.

When she thinks she has her emotions under control enough, she pulls her phone out of her pocket and makes the call.

He answers. He sounds even worse than she imagined.

“Derek, I’m so sorry.”


End file.
